The Witcher 3 Catch-All

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Game Informer has a new cover story!

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Some info from GAF.

World supposedly 20% bigger than Skyrim's
30-40 minutes to cross world on Horseback
New streaming technology (CDRED Engine 3)
Geralt's Memory is restored
No chapters/acts
Dude is f*cking DONE fighting for everyone else
Everything from solving MYSTERIES to slaying monsters
Coming out on "all top-of-the-line" consoles - I'd say that confirms next-gen is in.

"Bigger than Skyrim" immediately puts this into open world territory. Same with dropping the chapter structure from the last ones. Most importantly? Check that beard! Now we're talking.

Fool me once...

After my profound disappointment with The Witcher 2, and its critical praise, I doubt they're going to change much of what would need to be changed to make me like the next game. A big open world sounds appealing, but I read a lot about the wondrous, living world of the second game and found it to be transparent and flimsy.

I came to the unfortunate conclusion that a lot of the second game's flaws were glossed over by the PC crowd because it was originally PC-only. I suspect the phrase "dumbed down" will be thrown around a lot (not necessarily *here*, but probably some) in anticipation of a multiplatform release this time around.

I will try my best to restrain myself from posting here and raining on the parade. Apologies for the party-pooping already administered.

I am sooooooo excited!

Next-gen huh? Maybe by the time this comes out I'll have finally played the first two.

(Not very likely to happen)

Are they doing a presentation tomorrow (2/5) to show this in action, or is this GI feature what they meant by the hint in the CP2077 teaser?

I suppose this means I should play the Witcher 2. It's in my game library waiting ever so patiently for me to play it. Just need to gather the courage to click the play button.

Well, The Witcher 2 has just been bumped to the top of my pile. I swear I'll finish it this time.

Whooooo! Very excited to have this in the pipe!

I'm a bit cautious over the open world.

Just like last time they've hailed their no loading screens, but TW2 had a lot of 'airlocks' and twisty enclosed corridors to hide it, occasionally the little loading symbol in the corner of the screen, and if your drive just plain wasn't fast enough then it would throw up a loading screen anyway.

I'm also wondering how good the open world will be. As with TES, and open world isn't good in itself, but what they use it for and if they can fill it with good content. Hopefully they can bring something new to that type of game though, give Bethesda and others something to think about.

Details:

- The team felt it missed the huge freedom of open-world games like Skyrim
- Proper mounted combat still being tested
- Currently not a definite part of the game
- Horses will be in, though, since they’re important for navigation
- Ships float on the water in true physics interactions
- Team has doubled in size
- No chapters, acts, or any artificial break-points
- Geralt can seamlessly cross from one end of the world to the other thanks to REDengine 3
- No loading screens while traveling in the open world
- Can explore on foot, by horseback, and via boat
- Pursue yor long-lost love, play the game of empires on behalf of the northern kingdoms that still claim independence, and thwart the nefarious Wild Hunt
- Fast travel: instantly revisit any discovered location
- Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz: “A huge goal is to keep the high quality o four quests, with all the cinematics and impressive events and moments.”
- Point of interest will always be in sight
- Players will be beckoned to explore dank caves, embattled villages, decaying ruins, etc.
- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests
- Quests: help villagers, engineer the succession of the Skellige kings, etc.
- Use monster hunting for adventure, incoming, and unique rewards
- There are mini-games based on the area of the world
- Ex: Skellige has knife-throwing
- Gain exclusive rewards from mini-games
- Don’t have to complete mini-games to proceed in the story
- Monsters, bandits, traders, animals, and more will attack anyone they deem hostile
- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level
- Slaying monsters, fighting hostile humans in the different forms they come in, collecting items, leveling up are in the game
- World 40 times larger than the last game
- Three different aspects to narration
- Lowest level: free-form activities like monster hunting, crafting, individual standalone quests
- Second step: political situation and Nilfgaardian invasion is resolved through the core plotline of the major areas (Skellige, Novigrad, No Man’s Land)
- Each land has its own storyline
- Can abandon the storyline, but will have repercussions later
- Not doing a plotline is a choice the player has
- Main narrative: search for Geralt’s loved ones and conflict with the Wild Hunt
- Multiple branches of narratives that feed into each other
- Don’t have to do anything outside the main storyline to beat the game
- Could have help in a main-line encounter from an ally you gained in the Skellige archipelago if you’ve completed certain quests in certain ways
- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world
- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help
- Weather effects are dynamically generated and fully modeled as real volumetric clouds rather than being simply painted on the skybox
- In contrast to the last game, Geralt encounters communities and individuals with monster-related problems that need solving
- There aren’t contract-like assignments this time
- Press the left trigger to turn on Geralt’s witcher senses
- Can glean information from a crime scene upon discovering it
- Within range of a scene of interest, the mechanic conveys clues to the player through the witcher muttering to himself and/or visual depictions of past events that represent Geralt’s reasoning
- Time of day and other conditions determine where monsters appear and their abilities
- Can strike critical areas in combat based on how much you learn about monster anatomy and tactics
- The team is deciding between using a handful of in-combat special moves for particular attacks and a slow-motion quick-time event style
- Monsters you defeat leave otherwise unobtainable alchemical and crafting ingredients needed for making of unique items, potions, mutagens
- These allow Geralt to gain special powers and upgrades in the new mutation development tree
- These kills serve as the witcher’s primary method of income
- Moving more toward romance and away from shallow sexual encounters
- “We want to treat it maturely like we did in The Witcher 2. We are not bringing sex cards back.”
- Witcher 3 doesn’t have completely different environments based on singular choices due to the open world, but there are similarly impactful decisions
- You’ll be involved with mutually exclusive storylines and situations based on certain momentous choices
- Won’t be on the same level as Witcher 2, however
- Game mechanics based on previous games, but the team is revisiting many details
- Backward difficulty curve being addressed
- Reworking the flow of combat
- 96 animations for Geralt’s combat moves (last game had 20)
- Game has a “weighting” system for the camera to help keep the biggest threats in frame at all times
- Combat system: three big changes to solve the problem of being locked into long animations
- Every button press mapped to a single strike
- Each move takes a roughly equivalent time to perform
- Can always interrupt your current action to immediately dodge or block
- Can block/dodge when out of stamina, but you’ll be staggered
- Team wants to make the combat “more intimate”
- “You don’t run – in the Witcher 2 you were running constantly. You walk, but your attacks are very fast. Your opponents also walk but they have charges and things like that.”
- Geralt’s dodge roll replaced by a pivot move
- It retains its defensive utility without game-breaking mobility
- Attacks faster than in The Witcher 2
- Enemy AI completely rebuilt
- No scripted boss encounters
- One boss: ice giant
- Roughly a dozen types of interactive objects
- Ex: Can irritate a wasp with the telekinetic Aard sign to make a damaging distraction for his foes and disperse the swarm with the fiery Igni sign once the wasp swarm becomes a problem
- Magical signs are retooled
- Each of the five signs has a basic form such as Igni’s new flamethrower effect
- If the player advances down the magic tree as Geralt levels up, can unlock a second form of the sign
- For Igni, would unlock a 360-degree blast that immolates anything close
- Yrdren’s small trap can be changed into a bigger field that slows enemies
- Player retains the use of the basic form
- Other two trees are based on swordsmanship and alchemy
- Swordfighting: can unlock new strikes and boosts such as improved stamina and parrying
- Alchemy: mutation mechanic moved off to a separate development path, independent of the level-up process
- Alchemy specialization is based more on potions
- Improvements available for the horse and boat
- These aspects are still in development
- One idea: players could access their long-term storage stash from their horse as well as from inns
- Team knows about frustrating inventory management in Witcher 2
- Crafting still important for enhancing Geralt’s capabilities
- Can customize crafted items
- Some components are can be substituted for similar things
- Ex: monster scales instead of leather in a piece of armor
- This affects the properties of the final item
- Can find unique components as part of monster hunts or questlines
- Combine these with special recipes to make artifacts of immense power
- Each armor piece has a unique appearance
- Armor has improved presentation and new cloth simulation
- Can visit a barber to change Geralt’s hairstyle

Squee.

Yes. I am here.

I am ridiculously pumped for this! I am not generally an open world type. I tried twice, but never got in to skyrim, even though I love fantasy rpg settings. I have more investment in the witcher, I loved the first two games, so I will def be buying this day one. This may even cause me to get a new gaming pc. Current one is from summer 09.

Squee9 wrote:

Yes. I am here.

I am ridiculously pumped for this! I am not generally an open world type. I tried twice, but never got in to skyrim, even though I love fantasy rpg settings. I have more investment in the witcher, I loved the first two games, so I will def be buying this day one. This may even cause me to get a new gaming pc. Current one is from summer 09.

Skyrim is a great playground, but a lousy narrative vehicle as gameplay is based around a purely solipsistic worldview. I did pretty well with it by completely ignoring the major questlines and the minimizing the feeling that the rest of the world was just sitting around waiting for me to turn the crank. Even so once I got into the main quest I felt myself losing interest again.

The Witcher's great strength is that it has not tried to follow the typical open-world/MMO structure where everything remains open to everyone. It sounds like they are trying to preserve that while expanding which is promising. It puts them in a niche, for sure, but I there's only so much room at the top. In the modern environment games that aren't Elder Scrolls, GTA or COD have to thrive by filling niches rather than trying to beat out those big fish.
Hopefully their ambition does not outstrip the team's abilities.

Count me in!

Everything I've read here gets me really excited to try it out. The move to an open world structure sounds perfect. I hope that they take the same direction with Cuberpunk. If these two games turn out to be anywhere near as good as I hope, CDPR will become a company from whom I'll buy anything they put out.

I HAVE YET TO FINISH ONE OF THESE GAMES!! Ahem...sorry. Carry on.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

Yes. I am here.

I am ridiculously pumped for this! I am not generally an open world type. I tried twice, but never got in to skyrim, even though I love fantasy rpg settings. I have more investment in the witcher, I loved the first two games, so I will def be buying this day one. This may even cause me to get a new gaming pc. Current one is from summer 09.

Skyrim is a great playground, but a lousy narrative vehicle as gameplay is based around a purely solipsistic worldview. I did pretty well with it by completely ignoring the major questlines and the minimizing the feeling that the rest of the world was just sitting around waiting for me to turn the crank. Even so once I got into the main quest I felt myself losing interest again.

The Witcher's great strength is that it has not tried to follow the typical open-world/MMO structure where everything remains open to everyone. It sounds like they are trying to preserve that while expanding which is promising. It puts them in a niche, for sure, but I there's only so much room at the top. In the modern environment games that aren't Elder Scrolls, GTA or COD have to thrive by filling niches rather than trying to beat out those big fish.
Hopefully their ambition does not outstrip the team's abilities.

That's along the lines I'm thinking.

Open worlds are great, but they have to serve the game and enhance it. One of the headline bullet points is "20% larger than Skyrim", but I'm not sure why that matters, especially given the previous witcher games. TW1 being based around Vizima was kind-of a consistent location through most of the story, but more focussed and directed to the areas that mattered.

For me, TW games are about the story they tell, and what they let the player tell their own variant of the story through their choices. If the open world lets them do something that was lacking, then great I suppose, but it's going to be different.

Yeah, I'm doubtful with the open world. As long as it serves the game and doesn't get in the way. But it's The Witcher, so I'm in.

imbiginjapan and Scratched from downtown! I'm glad we've got a good number of witches lovers around here.

One of my favorite parts of the witches games has been the combination of the personal stories involving Geralt, and the complex political story lines of the region. It looks like TW3 is planning on at least addressing all three if not resolving most of them. Great to know that cliffhanging TW2 ending will get some love.

Day one trout halibut perch!

I've barely touched the other two Witcher games, though I really want to. Think I'm going to schedule a way to beat them both this year, even if I have to do so on easy.

I guess it's a good thing I just started The Witcher 2. I'm a little ambivalent about the open world as well, and seeing "20% larger than Skyrim" isn't an automatic good thing as far as I'm concerned, but if the atmosphere and story telling match the first two games, I'll be happy to play.

I think I'm just gonna go on blackout for this game

I have given up and restarted playing The Witcher OG over and over. I still haven't beaten that game. It bogs me down, but I would love to see the story. And thus...that has kept me from cracking into The Witcher 2, which I REALLY wanna play.

Now The Witcher fires burn bright in me again and I'm itching to drudge through 1 so I can finally see the awesome that is 2!

So excited to spin my wheels and ultimately get no where in those games again! >.<

Le0hart85 wrote:

I have given up and restarted playing The Witcher OG over and over. I still haven't beaten that game. It bogs me down, but I would love to see the story. And thus...that has kept me from cracking into The Witcher 2, which I REALLY wanna play.

Now The Witcher fires burn bright in me again and I'm itching to drudge through 1 so I can finally see the awesome that is 2!

So excited to spin my wheels and ultimately get no where in those games again! >.<

Same, I finally gave up on the Witcher 1 and am skipping straight to 2. I read all the story stuff from one on the wiki plus from the few hours I've played of 2 it's easy to jump in and understand what's going on.

Why does "The Wild Hunt" sound so familiar to me? Is that borrowed from real world mythology?

It's an old myth that's gotten all around, most prominently in Celtic and Germanic myths. Generally they are seen as a procession of ghostly hunters, could be faeries, could be Odin and Valkyries.

They also pop up in a lot of fantasy writing. Wheel of Time, guy gavriel Kay's summer tree series, and the interplay game Castles 1 all had wild hunt references.

The taste of their lore we got in TW1-2 is the most interesting spin on it I've heard yet.

I'm wildly hunting on my mobile app.

Le0hart85 wrote:

I have given up and restarted playing The Witcher OG over and over. I still haven't beaten that game. It bogs me down, but I would love to see the story. And thus...that has kept me from cracking into The Witcher 2, which I REALLY wanna play.

Now The Witcher fires burn bright in me again and I'm itching to drudge through 1 so I can finally see the awesome that is 2!

So excited to spin my wheels and ultimately get no where in those games again! >.<

If you can muster the patience to plow through the "murder mystery" stuff the game picks up significantly. That area was clearly the result of a studio who was still figuring out how to write a detailed narrative that didn't rely solely on combat. They got themselves all tangled up and confused. That said the Witcher 2 is superior in all ways.

Maybe I'll buy and pay The Witcher 2 by then. Probably not if I'm being realistic.

Squee9 wrote:

It's an old myth that's gotten all around, most prominently in Celtic and Germanic myths. Generally they are seen as a procession of ghostly hunters, could be faeries, could be Odin and Valkyries.

They also pop up in a lot of fantasy writing. Wheel of Time, guy gavriel Kay's summer tree series, and the interplay game Castles 1 all had wild hunt references.

The taste of their lore we got in TW1-2 is the most interesting spin on it I've heard yet.

Ah yes, I think I remember it from Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" books which I read about 50 times as a kid. They are heavily steeped in Welsh mythology.

Sadly, I don't remember it at all from the first Witcher game, because I never finished it despite trying over and over to push through...

It was fantastic. You should play it. I played on 360 and thought it was incredible.

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